Sledgehammer 'probably' canceling Call of Duty action adventure

When Michael Condrey and Glen Schofield left EA's Dead Space team to form Sledgehammer Studios under Activision's auspices in 2009, the goal was to make an action adventure in the Call of Duty universe. However, following the meltdown at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward in 2010, Sledgehammer shifted its focus to helping Activision ship Modern Warfare 3.

With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 on track to hit its November 8 release date, it appears as if Sledgehammer won't be returning to the action adventure it had started. In an interview with CVG, Sledgehammer general manager Glen Schofield said that the game will likely be canceled, calling the setting of the game too obscure.

"We'll probably cancel it," he said. "They gave us the choice of: Do you want to work on Modern Warfare 3 or do you want to continue working on this? And we really liked that. We liked what we were doing. It's third person, probably set at a time that might have 'niched' it too much. I bet that if we had kept going, within a month or two, I probably would have switched the time period but kept the gameplay. It had some really cool stuff."

Details on the action adventure have yet to surface. However, early speculation pointed to the game being titled Bloodhunt, following a trademark application filed by Activision.

Schofield doesn't plan on having his studio continue operating as a helper on the Call of Duty franchise. Sledgehammer will, he hopes, tackle its next project on its own, though it will likely still be set in the Call of Duty franchise.

"I think that we will work alone on our next project," he said. "This game has allowed both Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games to hire, and we hired really strong teams, both of us. We needed to come together on this one, but since then we've both grown; we're both over 100 people now."

"Initially, we weren't fully functional because we had to learn a new engine," he continued. "Now we have, I think the best thing that could happen for Activision would be for us to both go off and make our own game. Whether that's a Call of Duty game or not is up in the air. I plan to continue working on Call of Duty."

For more on Modern Warfare 3, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.